It's Time To Stop Pussyfooting And Balance The Federal Budget

November 26, 1985|By James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate

WASHINGTON — With every passing day, it becomes more clear that Congress will take no effective action toward balancing the bloated federal budget by general law. It may be that the time has come to consider an amendment to the Constitution. That suggestion is voiced with great reluctance. Since the idea of such an amendment first was broached some 15 years ago, I have steadfastly opposed the proposition. Over and over I have insisted that the way to balance the budget is to elect responsible people to the House and Senate. I have objected that many drafts of proposed amendments were little more than statutory law -- and miserable statutory law at that. Amendment of our supreme law is a serious business.

But what is to be done about these fearful deficits? Our government is drowning in red ink. Look at the record. We had a deficit in fiscal '81 of $79 billion, a deficit in '82 of $128 billion, a deficit in '83 of $208 billion, a deficit in '84 of $185 billion, and a deficit in the year that ended on Sept. 30 of $212 billion. That adds up to $812 billion over the five years of the Reagan administration. In the past 25 years we have balanced our income and outgo exactly twice. The national debt now exceeds $2 trillion.

Borrowing of this magnitude is bad in every way. The deficits contribute to the high interest rates that add to the high cost of American goods. They are responsible for a dollar that is too strong against other currencies. This year the government must pay almost $200 billion -- a fifth of the total budget -- in the form of interest. We are in one awful fiscal mess, and everyone is to blame for it.

In a spirit of panic and desperation, three senators in October came up with a statutory approach. Phil Gramm of Texas, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and Ernest Hollings of South Carolina drafted a bill to do the job by draconian whacks. They proposed to start from an arbitrary deficit figure of $179 billion in 1986 and to wind up with a zero deficit in 1991. This amazing achievement would be brought off by mirrors and blue smoke. Without going into the infinite complexities of their design, it will suffice to say that various projections would trigger various provisions; the president would have to cut everything (with a few exceptions) across the board. We would thus stumble to a millennium.

The House took the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill, a bad bill to begin with, and made it worse. The House crammed back into the barn of sacred cows virtually all of the entitlement programs the Senate had proposed to leave out in the cold. The original Senate bill probably was unconstitutional. The whole thing is a dumb show, full of politics and posturing, but signifying nothing. What now? If a constitutional amendment is to be considered, by far the best draft comes in the form of Senate Joint Resolution 225. This was approved by the Judiciary Committee on Oct. 23 and could be called up at any time. It is short and simple. It has a constitutional feel that earlier, abominable drafts did not have. It reads:

''Outlays of the United States for any fiscal year shall not exceed receipts to the United States for that year, unless three-fifths of the whole number of both houses of Congress shall provide for a specific excess of outlays over receipts.''

A second section would authorize Congress to waive the provisions in time of war. A third section would make the amendment effective in the second fiscal year after its ratification.

I still have grave reservations. A perfectly balanced annual budget is not the be-all and end-all. Ideally we ought to put away a modest surplus in good times; we can tolerate a modest deficit in bad times. There is nothing wrong with financing capital investments through bonds. I wonder how this amendment would be enforced if outlays did in fact exceed receipts. Would we get to June or July of a fiscal year ending in September, and discover that the ceiling would be breached in a matter of weeks?

The committee's proposed amendment may prove to be a toothless paper tiger. I don't know. But presumably it would lie on the table for three or four years while the states considered ratification.

In that period, perhaps Congress would get our house in order. But don't bet on it.